


Princess, Cowboy and Fingers

by Roshwen



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: A character study in nicknames, Just the three LITs being dorks together and that's it, Little bit of Fluff, Little bit of angst, Little bit of everything really, Little bit of humor, Multi, except plot, seriously there's no plot in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 06:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12205665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: Names are important, because names have power. But so do nicknames, and maybe they are even more powerful than real names.





	Princess, Cowboy and Fingers

Jake calls her ‘Cassie’. And it should have been the most obvious nickname of them all, it should not make her feel as warm and fuzzy inside as it does when he calls her that, but it’s not and it does. Whenever he greets her with that slow smile as she walks into the Annex, or whenever they’re on a case and the numbers and figures and formulas are making her head spin, he stands next to her, grounds her with his voice and his touch (and later, when it’s dark and it’s just the three of them and there is nothing but warmth and love surrounding her),and he calls her Cassie and she feels like the word makes her glow on the inside.

Because no one ever called her that before. Her parents did not believe in pet names and always called her Cassandra, ‘our Cassandra’ if they were feeling particularly boastful. ‘Our Cassandra’ was always followed by her latest accomplishment and by the time she was fourteen, she’d learned to hate the phrase. ‘Our Cassandra recently won first prize at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, isn’t she wonderful? She’ll be going to the International Science and Engineering Fair next year!’

She never did, but that’s not the point.

After that, she was ‘Cassandra’ in either a sad and slightly disappointed tone of voice or a sympathetic and understanding one, and she did not like that either. Not at all. When she went away to live whatever life she still had left on her own terms, people mostly called her ‘Miss’. Or ‘Hey’. ‘Excuse me miss, the toilet is clogged.’ ‘Hey, mind where you’re going with that mop!’

And that was kind of okay, in a weird way.

But then Eve and Flynn came along and took her away to a world of magic and wonders and for the first time in her life she had actual _friends,_ people who cared so much about her it was terrifying, who helped her see past the hallucinations, who brought her food or tea when she was so caught up with her research that she forgot to eat and who held her hair when the world’s fastest hangover made her regret every glass of wine she ever had. And who called her nicknames.

So Jake calls her Cassie. Eve calls her ‘Red’ with a motherly smile. Ezekiel has a whole bunch of nicknames for her, ranging from the short and sweet ‘Cass’ to ‘cupcake’ to the downright ridiculous ‘princess of this mathemagical kingdom’. After she was done laughing at that, she had kissed him and told him not-so-shyly that he should kneel before his princess. Which he promptly did, with a smirk and an 'As you wish'.

A few days later she finds a baby blue hoodie in her closet with the words printed on them in white. It’s a very comfortable hoodie and even if it wasn’t, the smile on Ezekiel’s face when he sees her actually wearing it (and the eye roll Jake gives him, before he ducks his head so no one will see he's actually smiling too) is worth it. She’s Jake’s Cassie and Ezekiel’s princess and she wouldn’t want to be anyone else.

* * *

When Jake was little, he was called Pebble. It had started as a joke, because he was ‘a little Stone’, but the nickname stuck with him until… well, actually it never really went away. When you live in a small town where everybody has known you since you were a baby and your childhood is a public event, the things you do and say when you are five tend to haunt you for the rest of your life. And yes, he can just imagine the look on Ezekiel’s face when he finds out, and that is exactly why there is no way in hell he’s ever going to let that happen.

After he grew up and started working on his dad’s oil rig, he was either ‘Jakie’ or ‘Pebble’. He was never just ‘Jake’, let alone ‘Stone’, because ‘Stone’ was for his dad and his dad only.

To the outside world, however, the world outside of Nowheresville, Oklahoma, he was Dr. Oliver Thompson. Or Dr. James McKelvie. Or even, in one memorable case, Dr. Griffin Griffould (something to do with a paper about the Welsh origins of the Arthurian legends. It wasn’t his best work). And he liked these names for himself the best, because as strange as it seemed, these fake names where more true to him than Jake Stone would ever be.

Or so he thought.

Because then there were ninjas in Oklahoma and a tall blonde chick grabbed him and took him away and told him about _him,_ the real him, and brought him to the Library. There, a smirk and a heavy Australian accent called him ‘Cowboy’ and big blue eyes and a soft voice called him ‘Jake’ and he knew he was in trouble.

Cassie still calls him Jake, because she is not used to giving people nicknames yet. Jake suspects Ezekiel is teaching her in secret and he is dreading the day she starts to practice on him, but until then he will call her Cassie, or sweetheart, or darlin’ and she will call him Jake and that is just fine with him. It got even better when one night, about a month after the Hoklonote case, he came up to her showed her his most recent paper. He didn’t even know why he did it, but the warm pride in her voice as she read aloud ‘Huguenots in the Hudson Valley. How a generation of Calvinists defined a century-long tradition of architecture. By Dr. Jacob Stone’ suddenly made him realize that his own name maybe wasn’t so bad after all.

Ezekiel is the self-proclaimed king of nicknames and has called him Cowboy from day one. At first Jake bristled a bit because excuse you, world renowned art historian here, but over time, he started to notice the fond undertone. The fondness was carefully buried deep inside layers of sarcasm and bad puns, but it was there, inching its way ever closer to the surface until one day, after a particularly close call during a case, it finally broke free between almost-sobs and a confession that sounded like it was being ripped out from somewhere deep, deep inside.

So now, when Ezekiel looks at him with that smile in his eyes, Jake just grins back. Because Ezekiel might call him a cowboy, but what he means is that Jake is _his_ cowboy, and that’s what’s important.

Jake's hoodie is a dark green, with the word printed in a lighter green. He wears it with pride.

* * *

Ezekiel never really cared what people called him. When he was little, his foster parents usually called him ‘Zeke’ or, if he was lucky ‘that little brat’. One very sweet foster mom once tried to call him ‘Zekie’ and looked at him like she actually cared a little about him. It was terrifying.

Ezekiel left the foster system soon after that and started making a name for himself: Ezekiel Jones, master thief. Best thief in the world. Prime suspect. Agent Jones (not for long, though). And it felt good, really, it did. He crammed as much fun into his life as he possibly could, never staying in the same place for long, always on the lookout for the next thrilling adventure, the next epic heist or the next big score. Because if there was one thing Ezekiel learned from a childhood that had given him absolutely nothing, is that you alone can make yourself happy.

You alone.

God, he had been so alone. He never even realized it because wherever he was, he made sure there were lots of other people with him, but they weren’t _with him._ They knew him as Jones, the kid who said he could steal anything, but that was it. To others, he was a party trick. Later, when he had proven himself, he was a legend. But he was never just Ezekiel. Never just him.

Until one day he had tried to steal a dagger (badly, he knew, but he had been bored and it was all rather spur of the moment) and some guard that was not a guard had tried to kill him and a strange guy with wild eyes had grabbed his hand and told him to run.

Then there was a giant blonde sort of ninja goddess who looked at him like his foster parents never had, a hot cowboy and the most adorable redhead Ezekiel had ever seen and he thought _maybe I could hang out here for a while. Just to see how things go._

Now he calls Stone ‘cowboy’ and Stone calls him ‘Jones’, and he calls Cassandra ‘princess’ and ‘cupcake’ and ‘Cass’. And Stone is right: he has been teaching Cass about the power of nicknames. Cassandra is a quick study too, because by now she is not just calling him Ezekiel. She started off a bit careful with just ‘Zeke’ and ‘honey’, but after a while she got more creative. After the ‘princess of the mathemagical kingdom’ incident, she called Ezekiel her prince for two days until Stone started fake pouting because he felt left out and she promised to come up with something else.

She finds it one night, when it's so late it's practically early morning again. They are lying tangled in a blissed out heap of limbs on the bed, breathing together in the darkness, when Cassandra starts to giggle. The giggling goes on for a couple of minutes before she whispers ‘ _Fingers’_ and Stone starts laughing so hard he almost falls off the bed.

Ezekiel didn’t think to get himself a hoodie, because he never had a nickname for himself before. But one showed up in his closet anyway, black with golden letters. When he wears it for the first time, Cassandra grins at him and Stone starts laughing again, and Ezekiel feels like he finally belongs somewhere.


End file.
